THE WANDERING TRIBE
When poor Paul Ruttledge made his great effort to escape from the doorsteps of law and order—from the world, the flesh, and the newspaper—and fell among tinkers, I looked with more interest than before at the little camps that one sees every now and then by the roadside for a few days or weeks. And I wondered why our country people—who are so kind to one another, and to tramps and beggars, that they seem to live by the rule of an old woman in a Galway sweet-shop: 'Refuse not any, for one may be the Christ'—speak of a visit of the tinkers as of frost in spring or blight in harvest. I asked why they were shunned as other wayfarers are not, and I was told of their strange customs and of their unbelief.
'They come mostly from the County Mayo,' I am told; 'and, indeed, they have not much religion; but last year Father Prendergast offered to marry a man and woman of them for nothing. But after he had them married, they made him give them a shilling for a lodging.
'The people wouldn't like to let them into their house; for if you would let one man in, maybe twelve families would follow them and take possession of the whole place.
'Some of them that do smiths' work are middling decent. They will sit there with their little pot and melt metal in it, and make things that belong to a plough; but the most of them have no trade but to be going to fairs and doing tricks, and having a table for getting money out of you with games. Indeed the most of them are no better than pickpockets—"newks" they are called. And they never go to Mass; and, as to marriage, some used to say they lepped the budget, but it's more likely they have no marriage at all.
'They never go in lodgings; but they'll tilt up the cart, and put a bit of guano cloth over it and a little kennel of straw in it. Or if a man is alone, he'll lay down on the sheltery side of a wall and sleep there. They are hardy with all the hardships they go through; they are the hardiest people in the world.
'And they make sport and fun sometimes. I used to see them dancing at Rathin gate; but no one would dance along with them; it is only among themselves they would have it. And they sing songs too—"The sweet boy of Milltown" I heard them singing.
'There was a sweep in Gort joined them. Charlie his name was. He went into Greely's shop one time, that had set up a little public-house, and bid him give him five pounds and he'd make his fortune. And he was afraid to refuse; and gave it to him, and off walked Charlie, and was never seen there again.
'He died after that in hospital. He slept out one night and the frost went through his body. There was another of them stole two of old Quin's geese at Ballylee one night, and sold them to him again next day. After he had them bought, Mrs. Quin came down and when she looked at them she knew them to be her own geese. "Give me back the money," she said. "I'd be a fool if I did," said he, and he went away.'
Another neighbour says: 'They often made their camp in the boreen near my house; but one of them never came into the house, and I never saw one of them at Mass. One very hard morning I passed by them as I was bringing in pigs to the fair of Gort. There they were, sleeping under an ass-cart, quite happy and satisfied. They fight at night and make friends again in the daytime; and they sell their wives to one another; I've seen that myself.'
And an old man says: 'I think the tinkers are not the same as the rest of us; I think they originated in themselves. They are very mirthful, and they have no control; but sometimes there will be a tyrant among them that is a good fighter, and they will obey him.
'They have no religion; and it might be true they don't believe in the devil—but what of that? Aren't there many on your side and our own that think there is no resurrection, but that we go straight to heaven at the minute of death?
'They never go into any house; and there's a great many of them wouldn't go in a house if they were asked. My father went one time from Ballylee to Limerick; and there was a tinker at that time the Government wanted to get information from; something about Bonaparte it was. And they offered him a good lodging with a feather-bed in it to sleep on; and he said if he slept one night on a feather-bed, he'd never be any good after; that it was more wholesome to sleep outside on a bed of rushes. They didn't get any information out of him after; though they offered him good reward, he wouldn't give it to them.
'They have no marriage at all; but their women might be ten times better than the rural women for all that, and true to their men. The women are very smart at cooking. You'll see them make a fire by the roadside with a bundle of straw and a bit of wood, and they'll put the pot down. What goes into the pot? Well, how would I know? but the men are very handy, and when they put their hand in the pot, believe me it doesn't go in empty.
'They used to be prone to coining at one time; but the law of transportation stopped that. And there's few of the police would like to grabble with them. I saw four of the police trying to take one the other day, and he bet them all; and it was a countryman got a hold of him in the end.'
And a woman whose house they have often made their camp near, says: 'They are bad, and we don't like them to be coming near us. There was a little lad of them came running to the door one night, and he called to us to come; for there was a man killing his mother. But we drove him away and didn't go; for we knew her to be a bad woman.' And another woman says: 'If they have a religion, it's a wandering one; wandering like themselves.'
And a farmer living by the roadside says: 'A bad class they are, indeed, sleeping out under a little bit of cloth, and hardy for all that. Wild beasts they are, stealing turf from the banks.'
But an old man from Slieve Echtge takes a more kindly view of them. 'There are very nice men among them,' he says; 'and they are as hardy as goats or as Connemara sheep. They go about to fairs and deal in asses and in horses, and sometimes they are rich. There was one I knew, a sieve-maker—they are of the same class—and that married a tinker's daughter; they were in here two or three times. I told him I wondered they wouldn't settle down in one place; for if I knew the way to make money, I said, I'd make plenty—for they are said to coin money. But he said it made no difference if they had money; they couldn't stop in one place; they must be walking always and going through the whole country.'
And then we got to the reason of their wandering.
'It was a tinker put St. Patrick astray one time. For he was a slave in Ireland after he was brought out of France, and it would take a hundred pounds to buy his freedom. And he found a lump of gold or of silver in a field one day, where he was minding sheep; and he brought it to a tinker and asked the value of it. "It's nothing at all but a bit of solder," says the tinker. "Give it here to me." But St. Patrick brought it to a smith then, and he told him the value of it. And then St. Patrick put a curse on the tinkers that they might be for ever with every man's face against them, and their face against every man; and that they should get no rest for ever but to travel the world.
'And there are some say that when our Lord was on the cross there could be no tradesman found to drive the nails in His hands and His feet till a tinker was brought, and he did it; and that is why they have to walk the world; and I never met anyone that had seen a tinker's funeral.
'But they may believe some things. For there was a woman of them told me one time they were camping near the railway bridge that in the night-time she saw the whole wall beside her falling down and shattered; but in the morning it was standing as it did before. "And we'll get out of this place as fast as we can," she said.'
'They are a class of themselves,' says another man, 'and they have been there ever since the world began. I often heard it said that our Lord asked a tinker one time to make Him some vessel He wanted, and he refused Him. He went then to a smith, and he did what was wanted. And from that time the tinkers have been wandering on the roads; but they wouldn't have refused Him if they had known He was God. I never saw them at Mass; but I am sure they believe in God. It was here in Ireland they refused our Lord, the time He walked the whole world after the Crucifixion.'
'To be sure they are under a curse,' said another, 'like the Jews, to be wandering always; and they have some religion of their own, but it's a bad one. It's likely St. Patrick put the curse on them; for a fleet of children of tinkers went after him one time, mocking at him, and he turned one of them into a pillar of stone.'
And that is their story as I have heard it so far.